The room was quiet and comfortable, a ring of sofas and beanbags surrounding a low table on which various snacks had been placed. It was looking good, Emily thought. She was still nervous, this was the first time she’d run any kind of group by herself and there’d been almost a complete turnover between last year and this.
But the university had a good reputation for inclusivity, and that meant a lot of queer and trans people, and a lot of new queer and trans people. Enough that a group solely for the transgender students was entirely viable.
If she could make it through without panicking. That was admittedly quite a big ask.
There was a knock on the door to the meeting room. Emily looked up to see a face in quite heavy gothic makeup peering around the door.
“Is this the right place?” the new arrival said, “I’m new here.”
Emily smiled. “Yes of course! I’m Emily, she/her pronouns. I’m the Coordinator this week while Jamie’s out sick,” she said cheerfully, hiding her internal screams of anxiety.
“Oh cool,” the new arrival said as she sat down on a beanbag in a corner. “I’m also Emily, also she/her.”
Emily laughed. “It’s a common name for trans-femme people, I guess.”
Then the other Emily, resplendent in black and lace, vanished into her phone to wait for other people, and Emily...the coordinator Emily (she was going to have to work out how to handle this, names were important after all)...was left re-arranging the snacks and checking her watch every thirty seconds.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait for long.
“Hi!” came a voice from the door as a tall woman with a cane limped into the room. “Ooo snacks do you have anything gluten-free?”
Emily the Coordinator nodded. “Yeah. But don’t eat them yet please, we’re still waiting for people. I’m Emily, I’m the co-”
“Oh I’m Emily too! I stole my boyfriend’s deadname when he transitioned and he took mine, it was great!” the new girl said, bubbling with an energy that other Emilys could only dream of having.
“Same,” said Goth Emily from the corner.
Emily the Coordinator paused. “...How do I manage names when there’s three Emilys?”
“For now,” Goth Emily added, as the newly arrived and extremely enthusiastic Emily reviewed the snack selection. “It’s a common name for trans girls, after all.”
“There can’t be that many,” Emily the Coordinator said.
There was a knock at the door.
“Hi! Come in!” said Emily the Enthusiastic, to the relief of Emily and Emily, who were respectively dreading and anticipating with silent glee what would happen next.
“Hi everyone!” called a girl with a strong accent from somewhere in North America. “I’m Emily from Colorado and this is my friend Emily, also from Colorado! She’s just started transitioning so-”
She paused. “Is something wrong?”
Emily the Enthusiastic was giggling as the eleventh and final Emily entered the room, hand-in-hand with a red-haired French exchange student. She’d been going since Emily number six had arrived, pausing only to write a neat and careful ‘EMILY’ on each and every adhesive name tag and hand them out to the group, and showed no signs of stopping any time soon.
Emily the Coordinator already knew this one, a second-year doing Architecture. She’d had conflicting lectures for last year, so they hadn’t had any of this before. “Oh, hi Emily!” the Architect Emily said, to Goth Emily’s silent joy and Emily the Enthusiastic’s very not silent mirth.
A chorus of greetings came from everyone in the room, startling the two newcomers. As they looked around to a sea of identical name-tags, Emily the Coordinator cleared her throat.
“Please. Please tell me you haven’t brought another Emily,” she said, as Quiet Emily (a first-year Masters student who’d had some realisations over the break) held out a pair of name tags.
They both read ‘Emily’.
The Architect blinked, then smiled at the Coordinator as she took one of the two stickers. “Oh no. She’ll need a blank one. Her name isn’t Emily.”
“Oui!” the french girl said, a mischievous smile on her face. “Je m’appelle Emilie.”
Silence.
“So. Emily then,” said Goth Emily, flatly.
“It’s spelled differently!” Emilie objected, backed up by her girlfriend.
“Okay, we do have non-Emilys in the group,” Emily the Coordinator said, checking her phone.
“They’re just not here right now,” an Emily at the back of the room said.
“Yes. So we have me, Goth Emily, Emily the Enthusiastic, American Emily and Other American Emily, Geology Emily-”
Geology Emily cleared her throat. “You mean The Emily who Rocks,” she said loudly.
There was a chorus of groans. Emily the Coordinator glared at her and kept going. “Quiet Emily, Loud Emily, Science Emily…”
An Emily in a labcoat nodded agreement. How she’d managed to keep it on around the campus without being told off by someone Emily the Coordinator had no idea.
“...Non-Binary Emily, Architect Emily, and Emilie,” Emily the Coordinator finished. “Right.”
She paused.
“I was going to do introductions and discussions but I think we’d need a spreadsheet.”
“Oh I do spreadsheets!” said Emily the Enthusiastic.
“Please don’t add a Spreadsheet Emily to the Emily Spreadsheet.” Geologist Emily (or possibly The Emily who Rocks) said, deadpanning. “It might get confusing.”
Emily the Coordinator slumped forward, head in both hands against the table.
“Why…”
“We could go for lunch and work out the names thing later?” Quiet Emily said, quietly.
A chorus of relieved agreement rippled through the room.
Emily the Coordinator stood up slowly. “Okay! Right! This is the first meeting of the trans social group, we’ve split off from the queer group this year but you’re welcome in both. We haven’t worked out what to call it yet-”
“Emily?” Non-binary Emily suggested. “It is a very common-”
“No. But we’ll work that out later and do a spreadsheet and discussions and talk about what we want to do as a group this year. I’m Emily, I’m your Coordinator and that’s the end of the formal meeting,” she said. Jamie wouldn’t be impressed, but he wasn’t here. “Let’s go to the cafe. I need a burger.”
Emily the Coordinator had calmed down by the time everyone had made it to the main cafe on campus and gone through the lines one-by-one after her. The Emilys had found a corner section,easily able to fit the entire group, and the social discussion she’d hoped would happen in the meeting proper was now well underway.
She’d just say she moved the meeting here. No one would blame her. It was working well now and that’s what mattered, she thought.
It wasn’t the icebreaker she’d planned, but she’d take it.
The first plate of food approached in the arms of one of the waitresses, laden with agria fries and the cafe’s signature burger. Her favourite meal here, and something the place was well-known for on campus.
“Burger for Emily?” the waitress said.
“Yes,” came a chorus from around the table, with one loud “Oui!” in the middle.
Then a moment of silence as eyes met, broken only by the sound of Emily the Enthusiastic starting to giggle again. From her seat, Emily the Coordinator looked around the group with wide eyes.
“....We didn’t all order the burger, did we?”